All Hallows Write Tonight!

Quick blog post for today, with the promise of a larger coming tomorrow.

Tonight I'm going to stay up all night and write a scary story. Because it's Halloween, and because that's the kind of thing that sounds like fun to me.

So tomorrow, there will be a brand new, hot-off-the-laptop scary story up on this blog for you to read. Hopefully it will be good. I have a plan for it, but according to the rules I made up for All Hallows Write, I can't put that plan on paper until sunset tonight, and that means I can't quite see how all the pieces are going to fit together yet.

And of course, these things always change in the writing anyway.

Why do this? Why have the rules? Why not break them?

For the same reason poets write haiku and sonnets and villanelles and sestinas. Sometimes having rules makes you more creative.

Anyway, it's going to be fun. If you're a Twitterer, you can follow the action starting at sunset (6:45 EST where I am) at the hashtag #AllHallowsWrite. If you're a Facebooker, you can watch my Facebook page, where my updates will stream automatically.

Hope you'll join in for a few hours and come back tomorrow to see what I've done. The plan is...ambitious.

But I have two energy drinks and am anticipating a surplus of Halloween candy to fuel me.

What could possibly go wrong?

News for the Week of 10.21.13: Soulwoven Comes Together, and All Hallows Write is Soon

Hello, friends and readers!

I was up until 1:00 a.m. last night reading the second book of Soulwoven to my fiancee, so I’m exhausted as I write this today. But it was worth it. The book’s coming together very well. It’s darker and deeper and harder than the first one was, but I think readers liked those things about the first one, and if you did, you’ll like the second even more. I hope to start posting chapters of it on Wattpad around the same time the first book launches commercially (February 2014).

Speaking! Of! Which! The commercial edition of Soulwoven is starting to look really exciting. The new cover is approaching a finished state, and it’s going to blow the doors off the one I’ve got now (especially in print). I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to handle page design and layout, and I’m really excited about the way the whole package is coming together. I’ve always thought of books as pieces of art, of which the text is just the heart. And I think that Soulwoven is turning into a piece of art, and it’s incredibly satisfying to watch.

More news! On Oct. 31, I’ll be staying up all night with a couple other authors for a scary story writing marathon we’re calling All Hallows Write (more info at allhallowswrite.com). That means I should have a new short story up here for you guys on Nov. 1. It’ll be a bit of a departure from my usual style, but I think it’ll still be recognizable as mine, and it’ll still be good. Hopefully. I’ve never tried anything like this before, and that’s half the fun.

Finally: Nadya. Nadya’s mired in the muck of the traditional publishing process, searching for the needle in the haystack that will be the agent who loves her. I’ll know in a month or two whether that’s going to happen. I’ve gotten lots of nibbles so far, but no bites. Everyone has been in concurrence that it’s a good book. It’s just a matter of finding the right home for it.

So there’s more coming from me to you shortly, in one form or another.

Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and if you want to give me a wonderful birthday present, head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of Three Dances. :-)

Yours dearly,

Jeff

News for the Week of 10.4.13: Soulwoven and All Hallows Write!

Hello, dear friends and readers!

Sorry for the long time between updates. I’ve been busy!

Thing of note number one! I went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in Denver and had a blast. I met lots of cool people, like indie bestseller Laura Kreitzer and fellow Kickstarter alum TravisHeermann, and I saw some old friends and made some new contacts with people in publishing doing interesting things. I also gave a workshop on how to write cover copy, which I’ll be presenting again online for Delve Writing on Oct. 15. As far as I’m aware, you can log in and watch as a guest. If you’re thinking about checking it out, let me know and I’ll double check.

Thing of note number two! I finished my last round of revisions on Soulwoven before it goes off to my editor Rose Fox. It went well. I’m confident that I’ve written a good book. And really, that’s all any author can ask. New cover art for it is in the works, and I can’t wait to share it with you. And mark February down in your calendars, because that’s when the print version comes out. It’ll be available worldwide on Amazon, and you should all buy a copy.

Thing of note number three! Maybe most exciting for the Wattpad audience, I’ve started the Cass round of revisions on Soulwoven: Exile, in which the story of Litnig and Cole and their friends darkens and broadens and spreads out. This is always the most terrifying round of revisions for me, because it’s the first time I share it with anyone, and it’s such an intimate experience. I always find flaws, and they always make me feel like there’s more work left to be done than I can possibly handle and that I’m a terrible writer. But when it’s over, the book is approaching a state of readiness for sharing with a wider audience. I want to start getting chapters out around the same time the print version of Soulwoven comes out. Fingers crossed I can hit that deadline.

Thing of note number four! All Hallows Write is coming up at the end of the month. I’m excited about the story idea I’ve got cooking for it, which involves thunderstorms and a creature from another dimension and bad parents and loving brothers and a level of gore somewhere between moderate and “yuck.” The aforementioned Travis Heermann will be joining me on the adventure, and I’ll be contacting some other indie writers over the next month to see if I can’t con anyone else into staying up all night with me and writing scary things.

Thanks for tuning in, thanks for reading, and thanks for believing,

Jeff